2013' DOs and General Secretaries Conferences in Prag

22/11/2012 - 28/02/2013

From Tuesay 20 to Thursday 22 November in Prag (CZ), more than 60 DO's and General Secretaries have worked on thema "Mass Participation" and 2013 calendar competitions

On 20th November, Bruno Kudrna Président of Czech Rugby Union and Jean-Claude Baqué President of FIRA-AER, have opened the conferences. The "Mass participation" project, agreed by FIRA-AER, has been launched to increase the number of Rugby Players in Europe. This concept will help the FIRA-AER Countries to get better results in world rugby competition. Jean-Claude Baqué has talk to improve the level on FIRA-AER competition and to think about Age Grade. Finally, he confirm that the yearly conferences will be scheduled in Autumn to let the FIRA-AER December AGM to confirm the results a few weeks after.

Using the next RWC 2015 as target, the participants have presented, commented and adjusted their proposals in order to fulfil the objective to increase the number of players of 20% in Europe. Michel Arpaillange has oriented the talks to the methods to use and to be more ambitious.

In the same time, 6 Nations representative Members have thought on Age Grade to analyse and propose solutions to facilitate the step over of Youth to High level Seniors teams.

A other working group has worked to prepare a specific technical module to prepare the Trainees to practise Rugby in Schools.

The General Secretaries, under the leadership of Gilles Bizot, have worked more specifically to improve competition administration, game management, training of Officials and communication tools. A new application could be launched to help the Unions in their daily Management. In addition, the rolling of FIRA-AER AGM and FIRA-AER Statues have been discussed.

After these works, Anne 'Callaghan has responded to questions concerning the IRB Grants to Unions.

Finally the calendar for FIRA-AER competitions has been finalised to respect the wishes of Unions to host competitions in 2013.

FIRA-AER would like to thank the Czech Rugby Union for the welcome and logistic support in the beautiful city of Prag.